News from the Votemaster

If you thought the pollsters would close up shop and hang out on the beach in Florida
(where else would a pollster go?) until 2014 you'd be wrong. PPP is already polling the 2014
gubernatorial races. Remember that most of the governors up in 2014 were elected in 2010, a huge
Republican year. If 2014 turns out to be less Republican, some of them will be in trouble, as
the first batch of
PPP polls indicates.

State

Governor

Incumbent %

Opponent %

Colorado

John Hickenlooper (D)

54%

33%

Connecticut

Dan Malloy (D)

48%

37%

Florida

Rick Scott (R)

44%

48%

Iowa

Terry Branstad (R)

49%

40%

Maine

Paul LePage (R)

41%

49%

Michigan

Rick Snyder (R)

47%

41%

Minnesota

Mark Dayton (D)

51%

38%

Nevada

Brian Sandoval (R)

55%

32%

Ohio

John Kasich (R)

44%

43%

Pennsylvania

Tom Corbett (R)

37%

47%

Wisconsin

Scott Walker (R)

50%

43%

A word of caution is needed here. Beating a generic opponent is generally easier than beating a real
one, assuming the real one is strong. If, for example, former Florida governor Charlie Crist decides to
try to get his old job back, he is likely to do better than a generic Democrat since people can envision
him much better than they can envision a generic Democrat.

The 2014 gubernatorial races are only 2 years away, but the 2016 presidential race is 4 years away.
Nevertheless, PPP is already doing what it is good at, polling political races. In a test of Iowa,
Hillary Clinton gets 58% in the Democratic caucuses, with Joe Biden coming in second at 17%,
New York governor Andrew Cuomo coming in third at 6%, and senator-elect Elizabeth Warren at 3%.
Nobody else hit 1%. If Clinton decides to sit it out, Biden jumps to 40%, with Cuomo at 14% and
Warren at 9%. But remember name recognition is everything at this stage. Clinton and Biden have
universal name recognition; the others are barely known outside their own states. That will change
very fast when the show gets started.
Here
are the
full results.

In New Hampshire, location of the first primary, Clinton's
lead
over Biden is even larger: 60% to 10%. While it is awfully early to say much, it seems clear that
if Clinton wants the nomination, she will be tough to stop even though it is far from a done deal.
Don't forget that in Dec. 2007, all the pundits were expecting a Clinton coronation in 2008. It didn't happen, but Clinton's
popularity is now sky high and a lot of Democrats in 2008 thought it would be "historic" to nominate a black man. Very few
will think it is historic to nominate an old white man (Biden), but quite a few might think it is time for a woman, especially
one who lived in the White House for 8 years, served in the Senate for 8 years, and is on first-name terms with the leader of every country in the world.

While they were at it, PPP also
polled
Iowa Republicans.
While the Democrats have a huge favorite in Hillary Clinton and won't have an ideological war even
if she runs against Joe Biden since they agree on practically everything, the Republican situation
is completely different.
In Iowa, Mike Huckabee is at 15%, followed by a three-way tie at 12% for
Paul Ryan, Marco Rubio, and Chris Christie. Jeb Bush and Rick Santorum came in at 11% and 10%
respectively.

In the PPP poll
of New Hampshire, the top finishers were
Christie (21%), Rubio (14%), Condoleeza Rice (13%), Bush (11%), Ryan (10%).

It is doubtful that Bush will run. The name is just too poisonous although he might be able to
do something no other Republican can do: make a big dent in the Latino vote since his wife, Columba,
was born and raised in Mexico.
Condoleeza Rice has been so clear that she is not interested, that it is hard to imagine her running.
Besides, she is pro choice, black, and a woman, all of which would help her with the Democrats but are likely
minuses with the Republicans.

It is much too early to say anything intelligent about the
2016 primaries, so something unintelligent will have to do. In 2012, conservatives were badly split over
a bunch of candidates, including Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry, and
Rick Santorum. This split allowed Mitt Romney, whose approval among Republicans hovered around 25%
for most of the Spring, to win the nomination.
While the Republicans were bashing each others' brains out over ideology, the Democrat coasted to an easy nomination.
The same thing could happen again, with Clinton grabbing the brass ring in February
with Huckabee, Ryan, Rubio, and Santorum splitting the conservative vote and letting Christie win,
even though he is pro choice.
It could be an epic battle worse than 2012.
If this is the lineup of serious candidates, the Karl Roves of the world are likely to back
Christie, since he is probably the most electable of the bunch.
This would drive the tea party supporters bonkers, but if there is one moderate and multiple
conservatives in the race, it will be deja vu all over again (with apologies to Yogi Berra).

For much of the year it appeared that Constitution Party presidential candidate Virgil Goode would
pull enough votes from Mitt Romney in Virginia to throw the state (and possibly the election) to President
Obama. It didn't happen. Obama
won
Virginia by 110,000 votes. Goode got 13,594 votes. In fact, Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson did
better than that in Virginia, picking up 30,437 votes. Together they had 44,041. If every one of those
votes had gone to Romney, he would still have lost the state by more than 60,000 votes.

Here are the (almost) final election results, collected from a variety of sources. In principle,
the Secretary of State's Website is the most definitive source, but a few of them, even now, don't have
final results.
The results are sorted by Obama's margin, with D.C. being his biggest win and Utah being his biggest loss.
Here are the data in .csv format.

Rank

State

Obama

Romney

Other

Obama - Romney

1

D.C.

91.4%

7.1%

1.5%

84.3%

2

Hawaii

70.6%

27.8%

1.6%

42.8%

3

Vermont

67.0%

31.2%

1.8%

35.8%

4

Rhode Island

62.7%

35.5%

1.8%

27.2%

5

New York

62.6%

36.0%

1.4%

26.6%

6

Maryland

61.7%

36.6%

1.7%

25.1%

7

Massachusetts

60.8%

37.6%

1.6%

23.2%

8

California

59.3%

38.4%

2.3%

20.9%

9

Delaware

58.6%

40.0%

1.4%

18.6%

10

Connecticut

58.4%

40.4%

1.2%

18.0%

11

New Jersey

58.0%

40.9%

1.1%

17.1%

12

Illinois

57.3%

41.1%

1.6%

16.2%

13

Maine

56.0%

40.9%

3.1%

15.1%

14

Washington

55.8%

41.8%

2.4%

14.0%

15

Oregon

54.0%

42.5%

3.5%

11.5%

16

New Mexico

52.9%

43.0%

4.1%

9.9%

17

Michigan

54.3%

44.8%

0.9%

9.5%

18

Minnesota

52.8%

45.1%

2.1%

7.7%

19

Wisconsin

52.8%

46.1%

1.1%

6.7%

20

Nevada

52.3%

45.7%

2.0%

6.6%

21

New Hampshire

52.2%

46.4%

1.4%

5.8%

22

Iowa

52.1%

46.5%

1.4%

5.6%

23

Pennsylvania

52.0%

46.8%

1.2%

5.2%

24

Colorado

51.2%

46.5%

2.3%

4.7%

25

Virginia

50.8%

47.8%

1.4%

3.0%

26

Ohio

50.1%

48.2%

1.7%

1.9%

27

Florida

50.0%

49.1%

0.9%

0.9%

28

North Carolina

48.4%

50.6%

1.0%

-2.2%

29

Georgia

45.4%

53.4%

1.2%

-8.0%

30

Missouri

44.3%

53.9%

1.8%

-9.6%

31

Arizona

44.1%

54.3%

1.6%

-10.2%

32

Indiana

43.8%

54.3%

1.9%

-10.5%

33

South Carolina

44.0%

54.6%

1.4%

-10.6%

34

Mississippi

43.5%

55.5%

1.0%

-12.0%

35

Alaska

41.6%

55.0%

3.4%

-13.4%

36

Montana

41.2%

55.1%

3.7%

-13.9%

37

Texas

41.4%

57.2%

1.4%

-15.8%

38

Louisiana

40.6%

57.8%

1.6%

-17.2%

39

South Dakota

39.9%

57.9%

2.2%

-18.0%

40

North Dakota

38.9%

58.7%

2.4%

-19.8%

41

Tennessee

39.0%

59.5%

1.5%

-20.5%

42

Kansas

37.8%

60.0%

2.2%

-22.2%

43

Alabama

38.4%

60.7%

0.9%

-22.3%

44

Kentucky

37.8%

60.5%

1.7%

-22.7%

45

Nebraska

37.8%

60.5%

1.7%

-22.7%

46

Arkansas

36.9%

60.6%

2.5%

-23.7%

47

West Virginia

35.5%

62.3%

2.2%

-26.8%

48

Idaho

32.6%

64.5%

2.9%

-31.9%

49

Oklahoma

33.2%

66.8%

0.0%

-33.6%

50

Wyoming

28.0%

69.3%

2.7%

-41.3%

51

Utah

24.9%

72.8%

2.3%

-47.9%

From the table, it is easy to see that there are 10 blue states where the Democratic margin is below 8%. Republicans might be able
to pick these off next time. In contrast, only one red state, North Carolina, is under 8%. So in 2016, the Democrats will likely be playing
defense rather than offense.